


A Color So Clear

by nocturneblack



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arya-centric, Eventual Romance, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-18 22:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11884236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturneblack/pseuds/nocturneblack
Summary: His eyes are blue. Yes, she remembers now.Arya heals at Winterfell. Gendry looks after her.





	A Color So Clear

**Author's Note:**

> I'm honestly really disappointed with the direction the show has taken Arya's character. I think she's really out of character and the things that make her so likable are barely there this season. So I wrote this to ease some of my frustration. More bookverse than showverse but it should make sense either way. I hope you enjoy it.

Blue.

His eyes are blue.

Yes, she remembers now. As color slowly seeps into her world once more she can suddenly see the blue of his eyes. The white of light and the deep greys and blacks that comprise shadows creep in slowly and softly, filling her vision until she realizes, remembers, where she is, where they both are.

 _Winterfell_ , her mind whispers at her—a word so full, so heavy, that it sits like a drop of water that grows rounder and rounder but will not fall, the meaning of the word obscured from her.

She closes her eyes and sees red and white. Red, like her sister’s hair. No, not that sort of red. Red like blood on her sword, stabbing into white corpses that move with the power of an ancient evil that clouds her mind with deep, inky black when she thinks of it. Red like the dark burgundy blood that had coated her hands, made them sticky, when she had pressed them to her leg—

Arya’s mind roars into action like a single flame held to dry kindling.

She realizes then that she is lying down on a soft surface and attempts to sit up. She catches a glimpse of her thigh, wrapped in clean, white linen, before a pair of gentle hands push her back down.

 _Blue_ , she thinks again.

Bluer than the brightest Northern sky, blue against the swirling black night that had seemed to last far too long.

_His eyes are blue._

_Whose eyes?_ She pieces together the blurred image of an overgrown boy with black hair and strong hands—hands strong enough to shape metal. She pieces it together and then she can picture him, the way he would look now (even taller, even stronger), sitting at the side of her bed. She raises her hand, sickly yellow in the light of the room’s fire, and reaches it out toward the blacksmith she’s conjured with her mind. His hand reaches back, stills her own, and places it back down on her mattress.

“Arya,” he says. No, not a figment of her imagination after all, then. His voice cuts a clean slash through the misty grey fog that fills every corner of her head, and then she can see where she is, that she is in her _home_ , that he is here and his eyes are blue, _blue_ —

 _Gendry_.

That was his name. She closes her eyes—she is so _tired_ —relieved to have remembered the name of the man at her bedside.

Her eyes snap open.

“You shouldn’t try to get up,” he says. His voice is deeper than she remembers.

“Gen—” she croaks, finding that her throat is too dry from sleep to speak.

“I’ll fetch you water.” He stands up and darts from the room and yes, she can see that he is taller now.

A soft, calming black drifts back in to her vision, almost lazily, and Arya sleeps and dreams of an acorn dress and a dirty forge floor.

***

She awakens to red. Not red like blood lying bright against endless white snow, but red like her sister’s hair.

“Sansa,” she whispers breathlessly. Her sister holds a flagon of water to her lips and she drinks deeply. There is even more clarity then, a bit less fog clouding her groggy, battle-sore head.

 _Ah_. That was it, there. That was how both she and Gendry had ended up at Winterfell. _We fought the Walkers and their wights. We—_

“We won,” Arya says, her brows knit together and her mind whirring like the wind of a fierce storm as she gazes up at her sister’s pretty, worry-stricken face.

 _She looks like Mother_ , she thinks, a sword in her heart. Yes, it still hurt to think about Mother. And Father. And Robb. And—

“Yes,” Sansa says softly, and tears coat her eyes.

Something heavy and grey settles over Arya, a feeling she is far too familiar with.

“But…” she struggles to fit all the pieces together, to make it _clear_.

“Bran,” she says, and the pain of it hits her and is reflected in Sansa’s crumpled face, in the red blotches on white cheeks and a pale throat.

Her sister lays her head down near Arya’s hand and cries.

***

When she is finally fully awake, when she _remembers_ , when her mind is as sharp as her sword once more, she discovers—painfully, with a fall and a shout upon the hard floor of her bedroom—that she cannot walk.

“You mustn’t put any weight on it, at least for a full turn of the moon,” the maester tells her.

They give her the great big chair with wheels that Bran had used when he was at Winterfell.

 _He’s still here_ , she reminds herself with a pang that hits her square in the stomach. _Only he’s buried in the crypts with Father now._

She hates being confined to the chair. She wonders what Bran must have felt like. Gendry falls in to the job of being the one to push her around (the chair is a heavy, cumbersome thing) and she hates that, too. Her limbs yearn to stretch and walk and run. But she is forced to be dependent on him, and it makes her feel weak, makes her feel like a little girl. In the morning and evening she hobbles around on one foot, dressing or undressing, getting in to or out of the damned chair.

During the day she relies on his large, strong arms. When she and Sansa have breakfast together her sister can tell when Arya is ready to leave, and so she turns to a servant and tells them to go get Gendry.

Jon is always nodding at Gendry when he wheels Arya in to the room, like he is thanking him.

 _All the best boys are bastards_ rings out in her mind, an aching refrain that she quells with the truth. They’re not boys anymore.

***

Spring seems to appear before her eyes, the color green invading her landscape—a welcome invasion, a childhood friend returning to her. Gendry pushes the chair’s wheels over emerald grass instead of grey slush.

“You’re so quiet now,” he tells her one day as he pushes her across the castle grounds.

She considers telling him that he’s _always_ been quiet. She considers asking him to tell her all the ways in which she is different now. But before she can say anything he speaks again.

“I’m sorry, milady, that was stupid to say.”

 _And you’ve always been stupid_ , she thinks, and that makes her laugh, a soft sighing sort of sound that comes from her chest. She doubts Gendry even hears it.

The sky matches his eyes, and her world is shades of green and blue on the day she asks him to take her to the godswood. He never refuses a request, goes about the task in a mundane, dutiful sort of way that betrays none of his feelings on the matter.

“I want to stand up,” she tells him when they reach the tall white trees with leaves like blood, leaves like her mother’s hair, leaves like burning fires.

“The maester said—”

“I’ve a week and a half until I can walk again. I need to be able to stand first.”

He comes around to face her, reaching his arms out to her. She grasps his forearms and Gendry pulls her up with no effort at all, like she’s lighter than the wind that blows calmly through their hair. She stands on both feet but doesn’t let go of his arms, staring up at eyes that match the sky, that match the sea. She realizes that she has missed the sight of his face while he’s been behind her all the time.

Arya knows nothing of the feeling that seems to flood her body at the sight of his face so close to her own. She learned nothing of it in Winterfell or in Braavos. She only knows it is dangerous, and the danger should be flashing bright red through her mind but all she sees is blue. The blue of his eyes and then the white of his teeth because he’s smiling down at her, and she realizes that she is smiling up at him, for what danger was left, really, after surviving what they’d survived?

There is no more red like blood, like danger, like peril. There is no more endless black of a cold, starless night. There is nothing but the blue of his eyes, the blue of the sky, the brown of his hands holding her up, the green of the new earth beneath their feet.


End file.
